Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 3 - From Marx to Mao

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
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with its population of 8,000, is a huge tannery in continuous
operation.”* To be more precise, it is a “serial” manufactory
controlled by a few big capitalists who buy the
raw materials, tan the hides, and turn them into a variety
of articles, hiring several thousand absolutely propertyless
workers for the job and ruling over the small establishments.**
This industry has had a very long existence,
since the 17th century; particularly memorable in the
industry’s history are the Sheremetevs (beginning of the
19th century), landlords who helped considerably to develop
the industry and, incidentally, protected the proletariat,
which came into existence here long ago, from the local rich.
After 1861 the industry greatly developed, and particularly
did big establishments grow at the expense of the small
ones; centuries of industrial activity produced from among
the population remarkably skilled craftsmen who have
carried the trade all over Russia. The firmly-rooted capitalist
relations have led to the separation of industry from
agriculture: hardly any farming is done in Bogorodskoye
village itself, which, on the contrary, divorces neighbouring
peasants who move into this “town” from the land.***
Mr. Karpov notes in this village “a complete absence of
peasant characteristics among the inhabitants,” so that
“you would never think you were in a village and not a
town.” This village leaves Gorbatov and all the other
uyezd towns of Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia far behind, with
the exception, perhaps, of Arzamas. It is “one of the consid-
* Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, IX.
** Thus, at the head of the horse-collar industry are 13 big
proprietors, each with 10 to 30 wage-workers and 5 to 10 outside
workers. The big mitten-makers do the cutting in their own workshops
(employing 2 or 3 wage-workers) and get the mittens sewn off the
premises by from 10 to 20 women; these are divided into thumb-makers
and stitchers, the former taking the work from the owners and subdividing
it among the latter, whom they exploit (information for 1879)
*** In 1889, of 1,812 households (with 9,241 inhabitants) 1,469
cultivated no land (in 1897 there were 12,342 inhabitants). The villages
of Pavlovo and Bogorodskoye differ from the other villages of
Gorbatov Uyezd in that very few of their inhabitants leave them;
on the contrary, of all the peasants of the Gorbatov Uyezd who have
left their villages, 14.9% live in Pavlovo and 4.9% in Bogorodskoye.
The increase of the population between 1858 and 1889 was 22.1%
for the uyezd, but 42% for the village of Bogorodskoye. (See Zemstvo
statistical Material.)